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Growth in schools’ staff merits study

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Monday August 18, 2014 4:37 AM

Governments always should be examining how they spend taxpayers’ money and looking for ways to be more efficient. A new report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute offers a provocative question for public schools: Why have the numbers of nonteaching employees soared?

Fordham found that since 1970, while the number of students in U.S. schools has grown by 8.6 percent, the number of teachers has grown by 54 percent and the number of nonteaching employees by 130 percent. Whereas schools once had an adult-to-student ratio of 1:14, that ratio now is 1:8.

Some of the reasons for growth are obvious: Schools have more teachers because parents have demanded smaller class sizes. Many nonteaching employees, especially teacher aides, are hired to comply with federal special-education law and other mandates, and to respond to needs that schools of the past didn’t deal with — for social workers, counselors, reading coaches and the like.

But the sheer disproportion of nonteaching staff, coupled with the financial pressures school districts have faced recently, call for a close look. Schools in other developed countries get by with far fewer nonteaching employees.

School districts owe it to families and taxpayers to make sure they’re using resources in the ways that are most effective. The Fordham report, titled “The Hidden Half: School Employees Who Don’t Teach,” is available on the organization’s website, edexcellence.net.